Today is a great day to give some money to Wendy Davis’ campaign

If your daily reading habits include progressive blogs, especially Texas progressive blogs, then you’ve probably noticed some of my blog colleagues making a plea today for contributions to Wendy Davis’ gubernatorial campaign. Why would you want to do that? Lots of people have given their reasons – BOR has a list of many of them – but I think Harold Cook says it best.

In my almost-25 years in politics and government, I’ve never seen anything in Texas like the excitement for Wendy Davis.

If this were shaping up to be a typical election, and Wendy Davis was shaping up to be typical Democratic nominee for Governor, I’d be ready to throw in the towel – Democrats would suffer the same typical result.

But this isn’t the typical election. And Wendy Davis damn sure isn’t the typical candidate; she’s extraordinary. I worked with the Ann Richards campaign back in the day. Governor Richards finished with a ton of enthusiasm, but she didn’t have it from the starting gate like Wendy does. Indeed, she started out her race for Governor 27 percentage points down in the polls.
Let me throw cold water on things: Wendy can’t do this. If you stand still and wait for her to win this election, you’ll be disappointed.

The good news: we – together – can do this. Not just Wendy alone, but all of us.

Texas Democrats have had candidates for Governor who were solid on policy. We’ve had candidates who were flush with campaign money. And we’ve had candidates who were charismatic.

Wendy Davis is the first candidate since Ann Richards who has all three. That’s why she can win.

But we all have to help her with that pesky middle thing – raising the funds necessary for her to tell voters what she stands for. Texas has more expensive media markets than any other state, so it’s impossible to compete without a ton of money.

Need more? Ask yourself how you’re going to feel if you wake up on November 5, 2014 to Governor Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. Now ask yourself how you’re going to feel if you didn’t do anything to help. There are of course many ways to help a campaign, some of which involve money and some of which do not. Anything you can do most certainly helps. But for now, right now, before much of that activity gets into gear, the thing you can do that will help the most is chip in a few bucks, so a solid foundation can be built. It doesn’t have to be much – $20, $10, even $5 helps. You know what you’re comfortable with. Give a little now and give a little more later if you can. Give a little now and do some of those other things later, when they’ll be needed more. But please give a little now. Here’s that link to contribute again. Thanks very much.